April 17, 2018

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TaskRabbit app goes down as it investigates ‘cybersecurity incident’

TaskRabbit was taken offline on Monday while the company investigates what it described as “a cybersecurity incident.”

The online marketplace, which matches people who have stuff that needs doing with skilled folks that can get the job done, went down at around 7 p.m. ET as its team began looking into what’s happened.

A tweet posted by the San Francisco company offered few details about the incident, though it did urge users of its service to change their password for other sites if it’s the same as the one they use for their TaskRabbit account.

“We understand how important your personal information is and are working with an outside cybersecurity firm and law enforcement to determine the specifics,” TaskRabbit said in the tweet, adding, “As an immediate precaution, if you used the same password on other sites or apps as you did for TaskRabbit, we recommend you change those now.”

We’re investigating a cybersecurity incident, and our app and site are down while the team works on this. Thank you for your patience while we look into this matter. pic.twitter.com/d61J1c3eh1

— TaskRabbit (@TaskRabbit) April 16, 2018

A company spokesperson told Digital Trends that it has already notified “Taskers and clients with active tasks” of the incident, and promised to compensate any Tasker who had a task scheduled on Monday and as a result of the disruption has been unable to complete it.

It’s not clear what, if any, personal data has been compromised, or how many people have been affected by the apparent cyberattack.

Once the initial investigation is complete, we expect TaskRabbit to offer a more comprehensive update and we’ll be sure to include the details here as and when the information comes in. In the meantime, you can check out a list of FAQs posted by TaskRabbit on its homepage on Monday evening that provide some basic information about the incident.

TaskRabbit was founded in 2008 and is believed to have more than a million users across 40 U.S. cities, as well as London in the U.K.

IKEA acquired the business in September 2017. Jesper Brodin, president and CEO of IKEA Group, said at the time that his company would be able to “learn from TaskRabbit’s digital expertise, while also providing IKEA customers additional ways to access flexible and affordable service solutions to meet the needs of today’s customer.”

The two companies recently partnered on a new speedy service that offers customers help with IKEA furniture assembly.

The apparent cyberattack is the latest in a growing list of security breaches suffered by online companies big and small.

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